Individualism
individualism
The tendency to magnify individual liberty, as against external authority, and individual activity as against associated activity. Under external authority are included not merely political and religious governments, but voluntary associations (such as trade unions), and such forms of restraint as are found in general standards of conduct and belief.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Individualism
A comprehensive and logical definition of this term is not easy to obtain. Individualism is not the opposite of socialism, except in a very general and incomplete way. The definition given in the Century Dictionary is too narrow: “That theory of government which favours non-interference of the State in the affairs of individuals.” This covers only one form of individualism, namely, political or civic.
Perhaps the following will serve as a fairly satisfactory description: The tendency to magnify individual liberty, as against external authority, and individual activity, as against associated activity. Under external authority are included not merely political and religious governments, but voluntary associations, and such forms of restraint as are found in general standards of conduct and belief. Thus, the labourer who refuses on theoretical grounds to become a member of a trade union; the reformer who rejects social and political methods, and relies upon measures to be adopted by each individual acting independently; the writer who discards some of the recognized cannons of his art; the man who regards the pronouncements of his conscience as the only standard of right and wrong; and the freethinker — are all as truly individualists as the Evangelical Protestant or the philosophical anarchist. Through all forms of individualism runs the note of emphasis upon the importance of self in opposition to either restraint or assistance from without. Individualism is scarcely a principle, for it exhibits too many degrees, and it is too general to be called a theory or a doctrine. Perhaps it is better described as a tendency or an attitude.
Religious Individualism. The chief recognized forms of individualism are religious, ethical, and political. Religious individualism describes the attitude of those persons who refuse to subscribe to definite creeds, or to submit to any external religious authority. Such are those who call themselves freethinkers, and those who profess to believe in Christianity without giving their adhesion to any particular denomination. In a less extreme sense all Protestants are individualists in religion, inasmuch as they regard their individual interpretation of the Bible as the final authority. The Protestant who places the articles of faith adopted by his denomination before his own private interpretation of the teaching of Scripture is not, indeed, a thorough-going individualist, but neither is he a logical Protestant. On the other hand, Catholics accept the voice of the Church as the supreme authority, and therefore reject outright the principle of religious individualism.
Ethical Individualism.
Ethical individualism is not often spoken of now, and the theories which it describes have not many professed adherents. Of course, there is a sense in which all men are ethical individualists, that is, inasmuch as they hold the voice of conscience to be the immediate rule of conduct. But ethical individualism means more than this. It means that the individual conscience, or the individual reason, is not merely the decisive subjective rule, but that it is the only rule; that there is no objective authority or standard which it is bound to take into account. Among the most important forms of the theory are the intuitionism, or common-sense morality, of the Scottish School (Hutchinson, Reid, Ferguson, and Smith), the autonomous morality of Kant, and all those systems of Hedonism which make individual utility or pleasure the supreme criterion of right and wrong. At present the general trend of ethical theory is away from all forms of individualism, and toward some conception of social welfare as the highest standard. Here, as in the matter of religion, Catholics are not individualists, since they accept as the supreme rule, the law of God, and as the final interpreter of that law, the Church.
Political Individualism. Considered historically and in relation to the amount of attention that it receives, the most important form of individualism is that which is called political. It varies in degree from pure anarchism to the theory that the State’s only proper functions are to maintain order and enforce contracts. In ancient Greece and Rome, political theory and practice were anti-individualistic; for they considered and made the State the supreme good, an end in itself, to which the individual was a mere means.
Directly opposed to this conception was the Christian teaching that the individual soul had an independent and indestructible value, and that the State was only a means, albeit a necessary means, to individual welfare. Throughout the Middle Ages, therefore, the ancient theory was everywhere rejected. Nevertheless the prevailing theory and practice were far removed from anything that could be called individualism. Owing largely to the religious individualism resulting from the Reformation, political individualism at length appeared: at first, partial in the writings of Hobbes and Locke; later, complete in the speculations of the French philosophers of the eighteenth century, notably Rousseau. The general conclusion from all these writings was that government was something artificial, and at best a necessary evil. According to the Social Contract theory of Rousseau, the State was merely the outcome of a compact freely made by its individual citizens. Consequently they were under no moral obligation to form a State, and the State itself was not a moral necessity. These views are no longer held, except by professional anarchists. In fact, a sharp reaction has occurred. The majority of non-Catholic ethical and political writers of today approach more or less closely to the position of ancient Greece and Rome, or to that of Hegel; society, or the State, is an organism from which the individual derives all his rights and all his importance. The Catholic doctrine remains as always midway between these extremes. It holds that the State is normal, natural, and necessary, even as the family is necessary, but that it is not necessary for its own sake; that it is only a means to individual life and progress.
Moderate political individualists would, as noted above, reduce the functions of the State to the minimum that is consistent with social order and peace. As they view the matter, there is always a presumption against any intervention by the State in the affairs of individuals, a presumption that can be set aside only by the most evident proof to the contrary. Hence they look upon such activities as education, sumptuary regulations, legislation in the interest of health, morals, and professional competency, to say nothing of philanthropic measures, or of industrial restrictions and industrial enterprises, as outside the State’s proper province. This theory has a much smaller following now than it had a century or even half a century ago; for experience has abundantly shown that the assumptions upon which it rests are purely artificial and thoroughly false. There exists no general presumption either for or against state activities. If there is any presumption with regard to particular matters, it is as apt to be favourable as unfavourable. The one principle of guidance and test of propriety in this field is the welfare of society and of its component individuals, as determined by experience. Whenever these ends can be better attained by state intervention than by individual effort, state intervention is justified.
It is against intervention in the affairs of industry that present-day individualism make its strongest protest. According to the laissez-faire, or let alone, school of economists and politicians, the State should permit and encourage the fullest freedom of contract and of competition throughout the field of industry. This theory, which was derived partly from the political philosophy of the eighteenth century, already mentioned, partly from the Kantian doctrine that the individual has a right to the fullest measure of freedom that is compatible with the equal freedom of other individuals, and partly from the teachings of Adam Smith, received its most systematic expression in the tenets of the Manchester School. Its advocates opposed not only such public enterprises as state railways and telegraphs, but such restrictive measures as factory regulations, and laws governing the hours of labour for women and children. They also discouraged all associations of capitalists or of labourers. Very few individualists now adopt this extreme position. Experience has too frequently shown that the individual can be as deeply injured through an extortionate contract, as at the hands of the thief, the highwayman, or the contract breaker. The individual needs the protection of the State quite as much and quite as often in the former case as in any of the latter contingencies. As to state regulation or state ownership of certain industries and utilities, this too is entirely a question of expediency for the public welfare. There is no a priori principle — political, ethical, economic, or religious — by which it can be decided. Many individualists, and others likewise, who oppose state intervention in this field are victims of a fallacy. In their anxiety to safeguard individual liberty, they forget that reasonable labour legislation, for example, does not deprive the labourer of any liberty that is worth having, while it does ensure him real opportunity, which is the vital content of all true liberty; they forget that, while state control and direction of certain industries undoubtedly diminishes both the liberty and the opportunity of some individuals, it may increase the opportunities and the welfare of the vast majority. Both individualists and non-individualists aim, as a rule, at the greatest measure of real liberty for the individual; all their disagreement relates to the means by which this aim is to be realized.
As in the matter of the necessity and justification of the State, so with regard to its functions, the Catholic position is neither individualistic nor anti-individualistic. It accepts neither the “policeman” theory, which would reduce the activities of the State to the protection of life and property and the enforcement of contracts, nor the proposals of Socialism, which would make the State the owner and director of all the instruments of production. In both respects its attitude is determined not by any metaphysical theory of the appropriate functions of the State, but by its conception of the requisites of individual and social welfare.
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DONISTHORPE, Individualism: A System of Politics (London, 1889); SPENCER, Man Versus the State (London, 1884); KIDD, Western Civilization (New York, 1902); RITCHIE, Principles of State Interference (London, 1891); RICKABY, Political and Moral Essays (New York, 1902); JEVONS, The State in Relation to Labour (London, 1882); POOCK, Socialism and Individualism (London, 1907); SIDGWICK, Methods of Ethics (London, 1901); Leo XIII, Encyclicals, Rerum Novarum and Libertas; MEYER, Institutiones Juris Naturalis, II (Fribourg, 1900); WENZEL, Gemeinschaft und Persönlichkeit (Berlin, 1899); LE GALL, La doctrine individualiste et l’anarchie (Toulouse, 1894); HADLEY, in New Encyclopedia of Social Reform, s.v.
JOHN A. RYAN Transcribed by Bob Elder
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIICopyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Individualism
INDIVIDUALISM.The word individualism is used in two senses, and the difference of meaning is constantly employed in order to discredit one set of ideas by arguing against the other. In a general way the uses may be distinguished by calling the one philosophical and the other political. Individualism, in the philosophical sense, attempts to derive everything from the intellect and the interests of the individual. However much a man derives from others, he ultimately depends, it argues, on his own judgment and his five senses; and, however benevolent he may be, all his motives have their source in self-love. Descartes started to reconstruct our whole knowledge from the individuals knowledge of himself, and his successors naturally sought to construct our whole activity from the individuals love to himself. Shaftesbury and Butler had to affirm almost as a discovery that benevolence is as true and real a part of human nature as self-love. Only after Hume had reduced this kind of individualism to sensationalism, leaving the individual himself a mere series of sensations, and after Spinozism began to be poured into the waters of speculation, was it seen that man could not be understood alone, but only in his whole context.
It is needless to prove that this kind of individualism is not maintained by the Scriptures. And still less is it necessary to show that it is not our Lords reading of human nature. The creature that is made in the image of God is not made for himself. The creed that says, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself (Mat 16:24), believes that it finds something more in man than even the wisest self-love to which it can appeal. The individual does not, it is true, lose in Christs service. On the contrary, he will receive an hundredfold, and, over and above, life everlasting (Mat 19:29). But that is only after he has learned the secret of forsaking all, after he has been taught, not of his own self-interest, but after he has been drawn by the Father from all self-regard (Joh 6:44). This possibility in man, our Lord recognizes, was also taught by the prophets, who wrote, And they shall all be taught of God (Joh 6:45). To be taught of God means to be saved from this kind of individualism, to discover that it is not our right position and not our true selves, but is alienation from our true life and our true home; it is to learn that not only is love part of our nature, but that we have never found ourselves at all till it takes us out of ourselves (Luk 17:33, Mat 10:39).
Philosophical Individualism, however, is not only perfectly consistent with the appeal to authority which the other kind of individualism rejects, but it is almost entirely dependent upon such an authority for any explanation of the social order. On the other hand, what we have called Political Individualism is frequently maintained precisely on the ground that man is not, in the sense of belonging only to himself, individualistic, but has his true social quality within himself. Individualism in this other sense means the rights of the individual over against authority, a position which does not, as is usually assumed, involve logically the other individualism, the individualism of every man for himself. It is not a denial of the necessity of a corporate existence or of the value of society. Its real opposite is Communism, and the real point at issue is whether society depends on the individual or the individual on society. Both Individualism and Communism, of course, would admit a mutual inter-relation, but the question is which is first, the individual or the social institution, and which is to be our chief reliance, the goodwill of the individual or the control of the social machinery. So far is this kind of individualism from involving individualism in the other sense, that it rather assumes that all the elements for the highest social state exist in each man, and would come to fruition, if only the external hindrances could be removed. On this latter question, it must be admitted, our Lords attitude is much more difficult to determine.
Of this practical individualism there are several types. First, there is the individualism of Nietzsche, to whom every altruistic feeling is the mere unreasoning instinct of the herd. That kind of individualism stood at the foot of the Cross, and said, He saved others, himself he cannot save, and saw in the position the height of absurdity. Then there is the vigorous Philistine individualism of Herbert Spencer. It conceives man as a creature with five senses and ten fingers, who needs nothing on earth but a free field and no favour, whose chief duty to the human race is to secure its progress by making the weakest go to the wall. The text it most firmly believes in, in the whole Bible, is, He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand; and what it cannot away with in Jesus is that He told people to give to everyone who asked, and to sell all, and give to the poor,a frightful encouragement to laziness and mendicancy, and a most hurtful interference with the law of the survival of the fittest. Again, there is the individualism of Mr. Auberon Herbert and the Free Life. In its eyes men are quite free to part with everything they have, and it is believed they would part with it for the best purposes, if it were not that they are robbed and also debased by being blackmailed under the name of taxes. Bumble is the true name and nature of all authorities, it having been their way in all time to muddle everything, doing it wastefully and doing it badly. Freedom, on the other hand, is mans highest privilege, and would, if it could get a chance, be his surest guidance. Force, which is the sole instrument of the State, has only one right application. It has a right to resist force, to suppress violence. The State is, when it keeps to its own sphere, simply the big policeman, a terror to evil-doers, and also, in so far as it kindly lets them alone, a praise to them that do well. With less hesitation regarding consequences, this individualism reasserts J. S. Mills principle, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. Finally, there is the individualism of Count Tolstoi, the basis of which he flods in the Gospels themselves. Judge not, that ye be not judged, applies as much to a man in his official capacity as in his private, and Resist not evil is required from the community as much as from the individual. No man is ever so much wiser and better than his fellows that he can have the right in any capacity to take over the regulation of their lives, and the very goal of history is to teach the folly and wickedness of any body of men trying to bear rule over others,a philosophy of history somewhat akin to St. Pauls conception of the dispensation of the Law as meant to shut all up unto disobedience (Rom 11:32).
The kindliness of the Socialists towards Tolstoi seems at first sight inexplicable, for nothing could be more opposed to their method than this rejection of all visible authorities. The Socialist, moreover, has the same sympathy with Christs teaching. Take, e.g., Headlams Fabian Tract, No. 42. The teaching of Jesus, he affirms, had hardly anything to do with a life after death, but a great deal to do with a Kingdom of God, which is a righteous society to be established upon earth. Christs works were secular, socialistic works. Whatever may be said of His miracles of raising the dead, they show that the death of a young person was a monstrous, disorderly thing to Him. If men would live in a rational, organized, orderly brotherhood, they would be clothed as beautifully as the lily. His denunciations were for those who oppressed the poor; and the man whom He spoke of as in hell, was the man who calmly accepted the difference between the rich and the poor; while the persons who were on the right hand at the Judgment, were those who had taken pains to know that people were properly clothed and fed. The Christian society was meant to do on a large seals the social work which Jesus had done on a small. Jesus ordained Baptism to receive every human child as equal into His Church, and the Eucharist to be a sacrament of equal brotherhood; and He made the first word in His prayer the recognition of a common Father, which must involve the equality of brethren. The Song of Mary describes Him as putting down the mighty from their seats and sending the rich empty away, and His Apostles insist on every man labouring, and on the labourer, not the capitalist, being first partaker of the fruits. If, therefore, you want to be a good Christian; you must be something very much like a good Socialist. The Church, we are told, is fettered, and ineffective for carrying out this task, but much may be done by those Churchmen who remember that the State is a sacred organization as well as the Church, and who are willing to help to seize it for the good of the people. Their first task, strangely, will be to free the Church from the fetters of the State, for one would rather have imagined that the logical conclusion should have been Rothes position, that it is the business of the Church so to labour that ultimately it may be absorbed in the Christian State.
This exposition clearly shows the reason for sympathy with Tolstoi. It is a case of extremes meeting. Extreme individualism and extreme Socialism are both alike conscious of the present distress. Individualism is as little satisfied as Socialism with twelve millionaires dining at one end of London and finding the cultivated globe too small to please their palates, and at the other a million and a half of their fellow-creatures not knowing whether they will have any dinner at all. Than this, both are a great deal nearer the position of Him who said, Sell that ye have, and give alms (Luk 12:33), woe unto you who are rich (Luk 6:24), who denounced the robbery of the widow and the orphan, and no doubt included every form of ruthless competition whereby the strong get advantage of the weak. Competition has become a sacred word in these days, but it never has been a Christian word, and if some higher law does not rule above it, the fittest that will survive by it will not be the best but only the most rapacious.
Extreme Socialism and extreme Individualism, moreover, have this in common, that both carry on their propaganda in the interests of the individual and in the hope of arriving at a better state of society. The Individualist thinks a better society can be formed only out of better individuals, and regards force as the great obstacle; whereas the Socialist thinks the individual will never have a chance in the present kind of social conditions. That Christ aimed both at creating a better individual and a better society needs no proof, and it must further be recognized that the society He Himself created, considered a voluntary community of goods at least in agreement with the spirit of His teaching (see art. Wealth). The emphasis which the leaders put on this voluntary aspect of communism distinguishes Christianity clearly from Socialism, but still the experiment indicates that, in a more Christian society, the Socialist ideal might be accomplished in another way. With our present concentration on material well-being, the end of competition would be almost the end of individuality; but if our real life were less lived by bread alone, if our true individuality were dependent on higher concerns, we might come to cultivate together the soil of the earth and enjoy together all it produces as much in common as we use the air that moves on its surface and the water that comes down its hills, and we should then be enabled to accept many of Christs commands as literal which we can only now live with as figures of speech.
One feels in reading the Gospels that what is more alien to them than either Individualism or Socialism, is the current amalgam of both, which defends all the Individualism that means personal profit and all the Socialism that means personal security and dignity, which finds all our Lords concessions literal and all His demands figurative. The typical attitude, though not usually expressed so bluntly, is Loisys. Christ, he says, conceived the Kingdom of God, which He thought was at hand, as the great social panacea. Though He enforced it with the enthusiasm and excess which are necessary to implant any great ideal, it was quite unworkable in this rough world. There rose up in place of it, therefore, the Church with its authorities for belief and for conduct, that useful, practical, enduring compromise between the individual and the religious society. It is this combination which most of our countrymen who love compromise as the oil, if not the water, of life, are concerned to maintain; and when they welcome the passing of Individualism, they mean to hail the revival of the power of the visible authorities; and when they object to Socialism, they only mean that they do not approve of the purposes for which the power is to be used.
The method of Socialism, nevertheless, is not the method of the gospel, and the usual course of the Socialist is that which Mr. Headlam follows,to prove that the aims of Socialism are Christs, and then take for granted that He would approve of the means proposed for attaining them. Even supposing we make the large concession of granting the exegesis, we still do not find the slightest attempt to show that our Lord ever in any way trusted to the State as the instrument for accomplishing His design. The usual way of avoiding this difficulty is to say that He could not be expected to look to a Pagan State as we are justified in looking to the Christian State. To this there are two very evident replies. First, Is the State ever Christian in our Lords sense? Second, It was not the Pagan but the Theocratic State our Lord dealt with nearly all His days. It was there waiting to be adopted; yet He lived chiefly in conflict with it, and He never attempted to reform it or work through it. He certainly expected His followers to have a good deal to do with States and kings and governors, but it would be in an extremely individualistic position (Mat 10:18), and all that was expected of them was not to fear them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul (Mat 10:28). Our Lords action was not revolutionary in the sense of actually overthrowing existing institutions, but He cannot be said to have cherished them. A certain regard was to be paid to the Scribes and Pharisees who sat in Moses seat (Mat 23:2), but He also subjected them to such criticism as must have sapped their power. He Himself so far honoured the religious institutions as not to oppose them; but the only evil He ever put His hand to the task of reforming, was that which disturbed the private worshipper (Mat 21:12-16, Joh 2:13-17), and His entire indifference to ceremonial purity rejected a great deal of the institution to the advantage of the individual. All this might seem to refer rather to the Church than the State; but if He distrusted the leadership of the former, He would not be likely any more to trust the leadership of the latter, if it took over the guidance of life. It also would be the blind leading the blind. What our Lord manifestly expects to see, is what He calls the seed of the Kingdom (Mat 13:38), those who in every place are worthy, who are prepared to be as lights shining in a dark place. Why should He speak of the result as a Kingdom of God at all, if, in the final issue, it is only of mans regulation? The meaning certainly lies very near, that it was a kingdom of souls regulated only by love, a kingdom of souls bent on a direct service and obedience to God, and requiring no other rule. This fundamental distinction between it and all other earthly kingdoms would seem to be the very reason for calling it of God.
This view is confirmed by what seems the most convincing explanation of our Lords temptations. To suppose that He was tempted merely by His own hunger and love of success and love of praise, is to ascribe to Him motives which had no power over Him at other times. But if they are temptations of His work, the temptation to provide a kingdom with fulness of bread and to rule by accepting the methods of force in the State and of display in the Church, we see how He could be touched in His deepest interests. When He turned from that way to the road that led by a solitary path to Calvary, to call many, but to choose only the few who also would be prepared to walk in it, He surely decided to look to the individual to save the institution, and not to the institution to save the individual. In view of all this, it cannot be questioned that the aristocrat in his peasants dress, digging his bread out of the earth, and living as if the social revolution had come, in the high conviction that the Divine way is personal surrender and not social supervision, represents Christs attitude better than the respectable persons who meantime take all the present system of competition will give, while they wait for salvation from the action of the State.
But Socialism only makes a pretence of being workable through the State, by ignoring the bearing which its action would have on the whole life of the individual, and it is with this larger question that our Lord is concerned. His Kingdom is not of this world, and its treasures are not upon earth, and it only concerns itself with the things upon earth as they have to do with the great treasure in heaven, which is character, and the great rule of the Kingdom, which is love. That He expected this idea to be embodied in an earthly society is plain, for the beginnings of it arose in His own lifetime. But it was to be a very singular society, in which none was to exercise authority on one hand, and none to call any man master on the other. The only dignity was to be service; and the higher the position, the lowlier one should serve. Nothing can reconcile this with the ecclesiastical embodiment of it in all ages, wherein the true succession has been placed in the officials, who determined not only action but belief, and who have penetrated further into the inner sanctuary of the individual life than any earthly government that ever existed. But no one recognized more fully than Christ Himself that the channels by which His influence would go down would intermingle their clay with the pure waters; and to assume that any organization is more than a dim human attempt at reaching out towards His ideal, is to neglect His own warnings. As the believer must be in the world, so he must be in the institutionin it but not of it, always retaining his right to consider whether Christ is there or not when men say, Lo, here, or Lo, there. In so far as the institution serves this Kingdom of God, this kingdom of souls, whose only authority is God the Father as revealed in the Son, and whose only rule is love, it is to be honoured; but it must ever be prepared to be judged by that standard.
The great end of all progress, therefore, is not to subject the individual, but to call him to the realization of his own heritage of freedom. It is in the crowd that men have done all the great iniquities. The multitude come to take Christ; the disciples all in a body forsake Him; the rulers come together to judge Him; the whole band of soldiers is called together to buffet Him; the crowd cry, Crucify Him; the chief priests mock Him among themselves. Even those that were crucified with Him stilled their pain by falling in with the cry of the multitude. Whatever institution, therefore, we may submit to, we can only belong to the true Church by first of all having salt in ourselves (Mar 9:50), by being of the truth and hearing Christs voice (Joh 18:37).
It is argued that the full meaning and claim of Christianity can never be explicable on the basis of Individualism, because from first to last it deals with minds which are in relation with actual truth in regard to the soul, the world, and God, and which have not fully attained even the limits of their own nature till they are united in the Spirit-bearing Body, through Christ to the Father (Strong). Possibly Hume contends for the Individualism here refuted. Nobody else does. Why Christianity is so individualistic is precisely that the soul is so directly, or, at all events, can, through Gods revelation and grace, be so directly in contact with actual truth, the world and God, as to make it only a distraction for another man, on merely official grounds, to come in between as a necessary channel; that the possession of such a personal relation to truth is a common bond of more power than any external tie; and that the visible organization is only vital and useful as it expresses this union. The usual way is to say the Kingdom of God is a purely spiritual condition on the one hand, and has a place and effect in the world on the other; to seek no common basis; to avoid deriving one from the other; to ascribe methods of worldly rule to the visible society, and then to transfer to it the attributes of love and truth and holiness that belong to the invisible, and so to claim for it, in subjection, the obedience which belongs to the other, in freedom. It is quite true that a person in a state of salvation is one called and admitted into a society; but, just because it is a society of saved persons, it is different in its relation to its members from all visible societies. Instead of more submission to their teachers and more obedience to their rulers, the Scripture hope of progress is still what it was of old, Would that the Lords people were all prophets,would that each man were less concerned about his neighbour and more about his own message and his own call! Men are always ready to organize others; the fruitful and difficult task is to organize ones own soul.
Literature.Butlers Sermons, and, in contrast, Paleys Moral Philosophy. For the extensive literature for and against Socialism, see Fabian Tract, No. 29, What to Read: A List of Books for Social Reformers. For individual freedom, J. S. Mill, On Liberty: Herhert Spencer, Man versus the State, and Sociology; Tolstoi, Essays, and many smaller works. On the relation of the individual to the Church, reference may be made to Loisy, Lvangile et lglise [translation The Gospel and the Church, 1903]; Newman, The Development of Christian Doctrine, 1878; and T. B. Strong, God and the Individual, 1903.
John Oman.
Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels
Individualism
The doctrine that emphasizes the reality of the individual and concrete. Differs from Personalism (q.v.) — R.T.F.
In political philosophy, the doctrine that the state exists for the individual, not vice versa. In political economy, laissez faire system of competition.